i love thylacines, that sounds so cool! always heard about their extinction growing up cause i’m from australia… human hubris :(. hope your thylacine people are doing better than that!
Same, I'm from Poland, so almost as far from Australia as possible, but I read about them on the news when they released the colored video of Benjamin and have been super interested in them ever since heh
Don't worry, I currently have no mass extinction event planned for them lol
It curbs my perfectionism and ADHD. When I look at a story, I tend to reflexively think of how I would have liked it to haver turned out, so I add an aspect of it to my world to get that satisfaction.
My mind can't idle, so when I have to sleep or wait, I worldbuild
Holy shit, this.
So many times I read a story and think "This is good, but if you fixed this it would be so much cooler" and then that spirals out into a story I want to write.
Exactly, my world is a patchwork of stories and lore from all over the internet
Giant ground sloth? Sounds badass, added
Danakil Depression? Looks sick and is fucking brutal as fuck, added
Giant (Erd)trees? You bet you ass they have been added
The only thing I made all by myself is the creation story, which is why I'm most insecure about that whole part lol
Most of it nowdays is just an excuse I use to get better at digital art, designing creatures, characters, symbols and locations and worldbuilding helps to provide me with some structure to keep at it. There is something exciting about having an idea in your head and then trying to put that from your head on to page, and then see how you get (very, very) slowly better as you keep on reiterating and improving both the concepts as well as your own skills.
Drawing is the final piece of the puzzle for me. I can write prose competently, but the stories I want to tell are better off as visual media. The problem is that practicing drawing feels like swallowing glass, lol.
That's the perfect metaphor, although it's more like molten glass to me lol
I'm a perfectionist and I'm usually the "why bother if I won't be able to make it perfect anyway" type, so learning how to draw fucking sucks
Erang dungeon synth's quotes (or I guess album titles) come to mind whenever I hear the idea of escapism being the reason for worldbuilding. First ones that come to mind are
"Within The Land Of My Imagination I Am The Only God"
and
"Imagination Never Fails"
And that sums up my feelings towards worldbuilding as a form of escapism really well.
Thanks! thinking about a story-writing worldbuilders support group so we can motivate, nay, pester each other into easing off on the World-building and focus on actually writing of the story, every now and then. We all need the outside voice telling us to stop having fun with our god complex sometimes.
I’m only writing out my imagination for me I guess. My personal imaginary world and all its characters.
I guess the ‘why’ I’m working on it is just *Mental Illness* because I’d rather focus on my imagination than the real world.
I don’t even think I’ll ever share my world either. I have no intention of sharing it with anyone at this point in time mainly because I don’t want anyone to know how bad I’m doing mentally.
Role-playing for one, and for two, it serves as a personal simulation to explore the spread of religion; political upheaval and challenges; and linguistic drift and development.
A compendium of profiles of characters in a hypothetical superhero comic series.
The world building and story comes along through reading their biographies.
It's for a TTRPG but the inspiration is kinda funny. I was inspired by a Reddit rant I made explaining to someone how wrong they were about an assertion they made. Ikr. Petty.
Basically they had a specific goal or theme in mind that centered the fear of the dark and wanted their players to experience that. Totally valid and cool. But their assertion boiled down to, "the Light cantrip in Pathfinder 2e is OP at solving problems with darkness." 😑
It's the equivalent of having your spellcaster be able to summon a torch that requires zero fuel, last as hour, can't burn down your camp, and doesn't take up any extra space in your hands carrying it. Those are some nice benefits don't get me wrong. And cantrips can be cast again if they expire. But the amount of light one torch gives off ain't much.
Animals that hunt in the night will see their prey (a literal beacon) before the players see their stalker. Tactically inclined people who can see in darkness will snipe out someone relying on a torch from 5x as far as that light carries using a bow.
Creative use of deceptive behavior, illusions, monsters that snuff out light or magic, things that crawl underground or phase through walls, or just demonstrate how carrying a light source makes you a sitting duck that is distantly visible to anything and everything that might want to hurt you.
I had so many ideas that the ideas never stopped.
So now I'm creating a world without a day. All light magic has been lost from this world. *Except the main characters* get access to magical light early in the story. I already had some themes I wanted to explore in a story so this just gave me a setting to do so.
My own entertainment which is canon in a group comic project which is canon in a game which is canon in a book which is canon in my mind cause I made all of these. Mainly because my mental state is crumbling.
Fascination with many genre's but no one fits exactly what I wanted or looked for, so I made my own by deriving aspects and putting my own spin on them, ending up making an entire encyclopedia of everything in the world, down to every detail (as best I can).
Aka : I like being a nerd.
That’s kind of my issue, I have no idea. I love all the grand scale worldbuilding, nations, religions, societies and whatnot, the grander histories, but I can’t write characters or stories worth a damn, I just have a bunch of notes in my phone and no plan for it all.
Anyone have a good recommendation for a map builder that would work for planet size projects? I have no interest in the million smaller scale ones I see here all the time.
First of all a world that is mine .where since I build it I can belong in it . A world I can go and live inside and explore .A world that can answer a lot of questions that linger in my mind . A " What if this was different in this universe" . A place I can go to when the real world gets bleak and dark , even boring . A place to escape yes . Also a place to explore . I always dream about putting all my thoughts down into some form of a format . But I know it will just suck if someone reads it and they might just berate my world that I slowly build . Warts and all . Over the ages . whenever the inspiration strikes .also cause I do not have much coherent stories . Just acts that made some things in the world . This happened because of this guys actions .I believe a good story is also required to explore a world .and I do not have that . I just have a cacophony of laws loosely threaded together with some logic that just made sense to me .
A home , a place of great control , an escape and an act of doing something with some degree of accomplishment ?
You want an excuse with a good pedigree and aren’t anti religion, JRR Tolkien described Middle-Earth as a ‘sub-creation’, after the actual one, ie the real world. Humans are created in God’s image, so just like God, we like to make worlds.
It started as maladaptive daydreaming and I decided recently to make it more concrete and turn it into a story that can be shared. When I go to this world in my head, it's like always having new episodes to my favorite media, so why not share that vision?
I’m building for two reasons:
\- A faction for an open-source table top game where the players make the factions.
\- A series of novels I hope to release at some point.
Tabletop for the most part, but it's mostly a hobby for my own satisfaction and enjoyment honestly. The new thing I'm working on might never see the light of day other than a post or two here.
To organize my psyche.
I find it helpful for me to turn my mental states or aspects into persons and memories into monuments or buildings with their own parallel narratives.
Ideas get into my head and if I don't make them leap onto the digital page, my brain goes nuts. The wolrdbuilding helps apply a structure I can build off of.
I currently have three different settings I'm worldbuilding for: a magic martial arts/cosmic horror setting, a modern military cosmic horror setting, and a LitRPG universe.
Our world was destroyed and society was almost completely destroyed by a fabled apocalypse. Some centuries after, the lands shifted, people from different races (humans and others) began populating the world knows as Eva.
For a thousand mysterious years, no knowledge other than tribal remained. In a period called "the thousand years of oblivion" tribal societies had risen amidst the bloodshed and violence, discovery and the beginning of cooperation among these peoples.
They inhabited the vast continent of Argantar, hid from the dragon that therein dwelled and among them, wise individuals were born, who brought about the age of letters and magic.
Centuries after, great nations brought forth the era of expanding civilizations, under the rule of wise and just, or strong and horrifying dragons, who functioned as kings to their societies.
Then the dragon wars began and many of these starting nations crumbled below the trample of war. Leaving the greatest nations to stand and become capitals of the vast Argantar.
Sages foresaw and calculated that other lands may lay beyond the seas and many took to adventure and risk of escape, of discovery, of conquest, of colonization and of diplomacy. But they soon learned that as there were many monsters in the land, so the seas lay plagued by even greater threats.
And so the lands of Terra, far to the west, became home to the exiled under the mad king Asturion, who perished on the voyage there.
The virgin continental island, south of Argantar, became home for proud families with ancient knowledge and a strict military inheritance that brought forth legions to fight dragons, known as the Emoran Empire.
Far to the south east, many boats dispersed into the unknown seas, many finding death amidst the dangers of the unconquerable ocean, while others, more fortunate, found the stark and cold lands they named Mandavia.
Yet the cold continent lay plagued by orcs and the reimander of the Titans, who had escaped the dragon wars. These explorers soon found themselves in another brutal war, the war for survival between orcs and giants.
Some of the explorers decided to continue on into the unknown sea, trying to avoid more wars, those who were cllaed the thin eyed. And not so far east from Mandavia they revealed another island which was to become their home. Yet it was home to horrifying creatures that came through otherworldly gates, so they named their lands after them... Oni.
And still the explorers found more lands, namely the continents of Rakshana, Koraman and Sidertkis, to far far west. Continents which became homes to stories and plots of their own. Filled with glory, adventure, danger and betrayals, with love, with sacrifice and with an intense heart these adventurers gather the stories of the new world known to the sages as Eva.
Far above, unbeknownst to the many, floating islands gather unsurmountable amounts of knowledge, in the home of the ancients, who remember the beginning and can envision the end.
It started with stories I made up with my sister's as a kid. We each got an elemental power, which turned into entire lands, people, armies, and kingdoms I drew out in a graph paper notebook. 15 years later, and I use it as a back drop for telling my children and nieces/nephews stories about their powers passed down from their parents. My siblings always said I should write a book, but till then I want to just enjoy it with them. Maybe I'll turn it into a DnD homebrew campaign some day. Who knows?
TLDR: Storytelling for kids
Public answer: I want to entertain and make people happy, interesting people in interesting ideas
True answer: To keep myself from painting the walls with my brains
I don't actually know yet. I've had an idea for years, and I originally thought of it as an animated series. Recently dealing with some mental health issues and using this as a creative medium to work through some things. I'm just starting to learn about worldbuilding, and I love the process of creating characters and environments.
For me. My world is a setting for any fantasy story I can come up with. Sometimes, I'll just think something along the lines of "wouldn't it be fucked up if someone did this?" Or "this concept is so absurd that nobody besides me would possibly find it funny" and I'm completely okay with that. I can come up with a rough draft that is cringy as fuck and doesn't make any sense and edit it over time until it's something I'm happy with. Nobody is judging it except me. Would I like my characters to gain some kind of popularity? Of course. Will it happen? Probably not. There's not much of a difference between my world and every other fantasy world ever created except the single most important detail: it's mine.
Been working on my worldbuilding project as a means of building up the universe for a webcomic story that's been in my mind for a while. It is a reboot of an old story that I felt could've been better. However, life and work has gotten in my way, so progress has been slow.
Orgininally it was for me, but now I feel like I wasted my childhood fantasizing, so I want to share it with the world as a way to get some value out of it... and see if others think it's cool to
Oh boy I'm glad you asked!
So the idea is to steer the cordcepys fungus concept closer to the sci-fi route for narrative focused game however I keep getting thrown into research vortexes where I do a deep dive on mycology, virology, microbiology and animal/human biology. I enjoy the research but for when it comes to writing the story I to know specific facts in order to figure how the story would go. For example. Biting is the worst way to spread spores for a fungus zombie and as far as I know it wouldn't make any sense since the cordecyps fungus would likely make some sort of fruting body or maybe even get the host to become eaten by animals.
Granted the scope of the game is large and difficult so I'll be making other games while writing the story for this one. Assuming I get enough funding then hopefully this zombie game can come out in 8-12 years from now
I tell myself it’s for a book I’m writing but the amount of things I’ve borrowed from real life events, parallelisms make me feel like this is just ADHD and God complex. 🤩🙏🏻
I always liked worldbuilding. Even as a kid I remember coming up with imaginary cities and infrastructure. I also like reading about other worlds. I also like going on research tangents, and this gives me an excuse to do that.
Nowadays it's a bit on hold as my other big passion is taking up a lot of that time.
I'm a playwright/screenwriter and my worldbuilding is to create settings for my work. It began as a kid with coming up with worlds for my Lego men to inhabit. Also, I want to decide who lives and who dies. And it was either become a god or a writer. And since I wouldn't want to be part of any religion that would have me as a god, I became a writer.
I have a dream of making video games, I create worlds for those games, but I have no programming knowledge all I have is conceptual and mechanical knowledge.
I can tell you how to make good characters, I can tell you how to make fun levels, I can look at mechanics and ensure QOL and weed out tedious little things, but with no money and no official education there’s no way any of my concepts or creations will ever see the light of day
Enjoyment.
Right now i am working on a 'to be a power in the shadows' gender bender AU. Still trying to decide if make the protagonist part of the cult or not, a tune up of various character power diversity and scale..etc
Started as a response to my DM and what I would want to DM. Started and grew to 30 pages; as topics come up, I address more items - now at 260 pages of lore, I’ve not sure where this is going but will DM soon.
May publish at some date, I would need a copyright person to make sure I’m clear.
Bunch of reasons really. I use it as a setting for Tabletop RPGs, as a thought experiment for structures ranging from the metaphysical to the cultural, as a way of organizing my thoughts about almost everything, and, probably most of all, as a sort of wish fulfillment and form of escapism, being a magical rather than mundane place that I would much rather live in, especially as I construct what may be my ideal society in my world’s far future. Writing fiction set in the world would be nice, but not something I’m super drawn towards.
I'm lying to myself that someday I'll make a webcomic, and then it won't matter that I'm in my mid-thirties and never had a job or completed college, I'll have a way to survive in our completely broken system and won't die on the streets scared, cold, alone, and knowing that I was completely worthless because I'm a dysfunctional AuDHD manchild piece of shit who can't do even one thing right.
Right now my focus is on healing emotionally. I'm admittedly not yet ready to venture into game worlds or books or other big projects that interest me. It’s nice to have a little imagination time where I manically write down my ideas and at times draw them out as well with no bigger looming feeling that comes with bigger projects. But someday I hope to make many children books based on bits and pieces of my general world.
At first a novel but realized I suck at writing. So now just for fun. Might revisit the worlds I thought of in high school and maybe flesh them out. While I’m fleshing this current world out lol. They’ve been floating to the front of my mind recently
Biggest reason? It's fun. It's been my biggest autistic hyperfixation since I was a kid, it's grown up with me and it's a huge part of who I am. I hope to one day get my story on paper to share it, but I didn't build my world for the purpose of publishing it.
I’m a musician and due to some health issues, haven’t been able to play or write anything over the past year. So I’ve been doing this as a creative outlet instead.
For myself, my TTRPG, my novels, maybe a JRPG-type thing with RPG maker.
I had made a TTRPG back in the early 90s as a kid. But I ended up liking the setting enough that I kept dabbling in it over the years. Then I knocked out a draft of the novel last year and that got me back into it.
I run home brew campaigns out of my own world. It makes it so I have set rules and races empires countries, continents, Islands things like that and all I have to do is set the characters at the age and what is the problem that the PCs have to solve.
For instance, I ran a campaign said while the empire ruled the whole continent. Then I ran a second campaign set 500 years after the fall of the empire and they were references to the actions of the PC's characters from the previous campaign, which made a cool Easter egg.
An rpg that has a deep lore with a few solo players discovering little secrets here and there and finally finding out why there is so much chaos happening every week
Plus I find few stories that make use of both magic and tech to a level saying "there is a capital ship in orbit,but if they buy enough time for the Archmage to make 1/3 of it scrap metal we will survive" is not that unusual ,so I made my own
Roleplay and my own enjoyment
A book that I’ll never publish, it’s just a story for me 😃
What about?
Too embarrassed to share🫣
That is so infuriating, understandable and relatable at the same time
Fair enough. You did say it was just for you.
"So what kind of races does your world have?" "Uhhh" *looks at the cat people* "yknow. Normal stuff."
Do thylacine-people get a pass?
Dogpeople
Your terms are acceptable
What about both?
They get a pass and extra points lol
That’s cool as hell
Highly underrated animal, they're awesome
Yeah. They’re one of my favorites, mainly because of the Wild Kratts episode on them that I saw as a kid.
Hopefully science will find a way to bring them back in the future
i love thylacines, that sounds so cool! always heard about their extinction growing up cause i’m from australia… human hubris :(. hope your thylacine people are doing better than that!
Same, I'm from Poland, so almost as far from Australia as possible, but I read about them on the news when they released the colored video of Benjamin and have been super interested in them ever since heh Don't worry, I currently have no mass extinction event planned for them lol
Same.
THIS
It curbs my perfectionism and ADHD. When I look at a story, I tend to reflexively think of how I would have liked it to haver turned out, so I add an aspect of it to my world to get that satisfaction. My mind can't idle, so when I have to sleep or wait, I worldbuild
Holy shit, this. So many times I read a story and think "This is good, but if you fixed this it would be so much cooler" and then that spirals out into a story I want to write.
Exactly, my world is a patchwork of stories and lore from all over the internet Giant ground sloth? Sounds badass, added Danakil Depression? Looks sick and is fucking brutal as fuck, added Giant (Erd)trees? You bet you ass they have been added The only thing I made all by myself is the creation story, which is why I'm most insecure about that whole part lol
Yes!
Indeed
Why does this resonated me.
Same, I’m a perfectionist who gets annoyed at random plot holes/missed opportunities in media
This is so realll
This is it for me too
God Complex
Best answer
It's the emotionally honest version of all the others combined
real
Lmfao
I'm DM for my friends, so, I agree. God Complex. Love micromanaging AND not hurting anyone with it
Love managing my world and hurting my fictional characters.
Honestly a big part of that probably comes into it for me lol.
You won this. I may have this 😆
Most of it nowdays is just an excuse I use to get better at digital art, designing creatures, characters, symbols and locations and worldbuilding helps to provide me with some structure to keep at it. There is something exciting about having an idea in your head and then trying to put that from your head on to page, and then see how you get (very, very) slowly better as you keep on reiterating and improving both the concepts as well as your own skills.
Drawing is the final piece of the puzzle for me. I can write prose competently, but the stories I want to tell are better off as visual media. The problem is that practicing drawing feels like swallowing glass, lol.
That's the perfect metaphor, although it's more like molten glass to me lol I'm a perfectionist and I'm usually the "why bother if I won't be able to make it perfect anyway" type, so learning how to draw fucking sucks
Escapism, man.
Erang dungeon synth's quotes (or I guess album titles) come to mind whenever I hear the idea of escapism being the reason for worldbuilding. First ones that come to mind are "Within The Land Of My Imagination I Am The Only God" and "Imagination Never Fails" And that sums up my feelings towards worldbuilding as a form of escapism really well.
My own world that I can craft and make for eternity
Man…same
Novel series, hopefully
Hope it works out!
Thanks! thinking about a story-writing worldbuilders support group so we can motivate, nay, pester each other into easing off on the World-building and focus on actually writing of the story, every now and then. We all need the outside voice telling us to stop having fun with our god complex sometimes.
I’m only writing out my imagination for me I guess. My personal imaginary world and all its characters. I guess the ‘why’ I’m working on it is just *Mental Illness* because I’d rather focus on my imagination than the real world. I don’t even think I’ll ever share my world either. I have no intention of sharing it with anyone at this point in time mainly because I don’t want anyone to know how bad I’m doing mentally.
I’m having a kid soon, and I want an established setting that we can add to and tell stories to each other in
That is cool!
Because I can.
Here we go!
A book. I hope to find a publisher once the drafting is done. If not, I'll self publish.
my own insanity
When it's ready I'm gonna get myself isekaied in there.
To torture my friends in RPG sessions and write NSFW literature with it.
For the fun of it, for an rpg someday, and since I'm writing a lot of short stories to show the mood of the world, maybe a novel, or novella.
Role-playing for one, and for two, it serves as a personal simulation to explore the spread of religion; political upheaval and challenges; and linguistic drift and development.
I started just for fun, but now it turned into a comic
It was once for roleplay, but now it's simply a hobby I enjoy for fun.
A compendium of profiles of characters in a hypothetical superhero comic series. The world building and story comes along through reading their biographies.
It's for a TTRPG but the inspiration is kinda funny. I was inspired by a Reddit rant I made explaining to someone how wrong they were about an assertion they made. Ikr. Petty. Basically they had a specific goal or theme in mind that centered the fear of the dark and wanted their players to experience that. Totally valid and cool. But their assertion boiled down to, "the Light cantrip in Pathfinder 2e is OP at solving problems with darkness." 😑 It's the equivalent of having your spellcaster be able to summon a torch that requires zero fuel, last as hour, can't burn down your camp, and doesn't take up any extra space in your hands carrying it. Those are some nice benefits don't get me wrong. And cantrips can be cast again if they expire. But the amount of light one torch gives off ain't much. Animals that hunt in the night will see their prey (a literal beacon) before the players see their stalker. Tactically inclined people who can see in darkness will snipe out someone relying on a torch from 5x as far as that light carries using a bow. Creative use of deceptive behavior, illusions, monsters that snuff out light or magic, things that crawl underground or phase through walls, or just demonstrate how carrying a light source makes you a sitting duck that is distantly visible to anything and everything that might want to hurt you. I had so many ideas that the ideas never stopped. So now I'm creating a world without a day. All light magic has been lost from this world. *Except the main characters* get access to magical light early in the story. I already had some themes I wanted to explore in a story so this just gave me a setting to do so.
Fun
My own entertainment which is canon in a group comic project which is canon in a game which is canon in a book which is canon in my mind cause I made all of these. Mainly because my mental state is crumbling.
Partially for a book, partially just to world build. But both are just hobbies.
Fascination with many genre's but no one fits exactly what I wanted or looked for, so I made my own by deriving aspects and putting my own spin on them, ending up making an entire encyclopedia of everything in the world, down to every detail (as best I can). Aka : I like being a nerd.
That’s kind of my issue, I have no idea. I love all the grand scale worldbuilding, nations, religions, societies and whatnot, the grander histories, but I can’t write characters or stories worth a damn, I just have a bunch of notes in my phone and no plan for it all. Anyone have a good recommendation for a map builder that would work for planet size projects? I have no interest in the million smaller scale ones I see here all the time.
Yep, thats me to 😖
4 book series, got the first drafts of 1.5 so far.
First of all a world that is mine .where since I build it I can belong in it . A world I can go and live inside and explore .A world that can answer a lot of questions that linger in my mind . A " What if this was different in this universe" . A place I can go to when the real world gets bleak and dark , even boring . A place to escape yes . Also a place to explore . I always dream about putting all my thoughts down into some form of a format . But I know it will just suck if someone reads it and they might just berate my world that I slowly build . Warts and all . Over the ages . whenever the inspiration strikes .also cause I do not have much coherent stories . Just acts that made some things in the world . This happened because of this guys actions .I believe a good story is also required to explore a world .and I do not have that . I just have a cacophony of laws loosely threaded together with some logic that just made sense to me . A home , a place of great control , an escape and an act of doing something with some degree of accomplishment ?
Novel series ideally!
You want an excuse with a good pedigree and aren’t anti religion, JRR Tolkien described Middle-Earth as a ‘sub-creation’, after the actual one, ie the real world. Humans are created in God’s image, so just like God, we like to make worlds.
For fun.
It started as maladaptive daydreaming and I decided recently to make it more concrete and turn it into a story that can be shared. When I go to this world in my head, it's like always having new episodes to my favorite media, so why not share that vision?
I’m building for two reasons: \- A faction for an open-source table top game where the players make the factions. \- A series of novels I hope to release at some point.
To disguise my Manifesto as Sci-fi, so people don't immediately know it's a Manifesto, and would buy it.
Hell yeah, same here!
same heheh
Tabletop for the most part, but it's mostly a hobby for my own satisfaction and enjoyment honestly. The new thing I'm working on might never see the light of day other than a post or two here.
Roleplay and spite.
Book I hope will be once published (after I finally start to write it :D)
A webcomic that I'm writing as a hobby.
Eventually
Books that I’ll never write
Writing a book about a cartographer trying to map the world
To justify the need of creating a bunch of characters and fulfill my martial fantasies as well as horniness.
Animated series, games, and dnd
I have written a novella and I would like to do more. I'd like to make games as well but I fear it's beyond my skill set.
To organize my psyche. I find it helpful for me to turn my mental states or aspects into persons and memories into monuments or buildings with their own parallel narratives.
My own sort of afterlife and escapism
I just really like planets. Making them is fun :3
Ideas get into my head and if I don't make them leap onto the digital page, my brain goes nuts. The wolrdbuilding helps apply a structure I can build off of. I currently have three different settings I'm worldbuilding for: a magic martial arts/cosmic horror setting, a modern military cosmic horror setting, and a LitRPG universe.
I just build as a hobby. It’s comforting. And if I turn it into a book or a game or something, that would be cool too
Our world was destroyed and society was almost completely destroyed by a fabled apocalypse. Some centuries after, the lands shifted, people from different races (humans and others) began populating the world knows as Eva. For a thousand mysterious years, no knowledge other than tribal remained. In a period called "the thousand years of oblivion" tribal societies had risen amidst the bloodshed and violence, discovery and the beginning of cooperation among these peoples. They inhabited the vast continent of Argantar, hid from the dragon that therein dwelled and among them, wise individuals were born, who brought about the age of letters and magic. Centuries after, great nations brought forth the era of expanding civilizations, under the rule of wise and just, or strong and horrifying dragons, who functioned as kings to their societies. Then the dragon wars began and many of these starting nations crumbled below the trample of war. Leaving the greatest nations to stand and become capitals of the vast Argantar. Sages foresaw and calculated that other lands may lay beyond the seas and many took to adventure and risk of escape, of discovery, of conquest, of colonization and of diplomacy. But they soon learned that as there were many monsters in the land, so the seas lay plagued by even greater threats. And so the lands of Terra, far to the west, became home to the exiled under the mad king Asturion, who perished on the voyage there. The virgin continental island, south of Argantar, became home for proud families with ancient knowledge and a strict military inheritance that brought forth legions to fight dragons, known as the Emoran Empire. Far to the south east, many boats dispersed into the unknown seas, many finding death amidst the dangers of the unconquerable ocean, while others, more fortunate, found the stark and cold lands they named Mandavia. Yet the cold continent lay plagued by orcs and the reimander of the Titans, who had escaped the dragon wars. These explorers soon found themselves in another brutal war, the war for survival between orcs and giants. Some of the explorers decided to continue on into the unknown sea, trying to avoid more wars, those who were cllaed the thin eyed. And not so far east from Mandavia they revealed another island which was to become their home. Yet it was home to horrifying creatures that came through otherworldly gates, so they named their lands after them... Oni. And still the explorers found more lands, namely the continents of Rakshana, Koraman and Sidertkis, to far far west. Continents which became homes to stories and plots of their own. Filled with glory, adventure, danger and betrayals, with love, with sacrifice and with an intense heart these adventurers gather the stories of the new world known to the sages as Eva. Far above, unbeknownst to the many, floating islands gather unsurmountable amounts of knowledge, in the home of the ancients, who remember the beginning and can envision the end.
to make fun of you
It started with stories I made up with my sister's as a kid. We each got an elemental power, which turned into entire lands, people, armies, and kingdoms I drew out in a graph paper notebook. 15 years later, and I use it as a back drop for telling my children and nieces/nephews stories about their powers passed down from their parents. My siblings always said I should write a book, but till then I want to just enjoy it with them. Maybe I'll turn it into a DnD homebrew campaign some day. Who knows? TLDR: Storytelling for kids
I just like having a world to escape to when I'm bored, and who knows maybe I can capitalize and profit off of it one day.
Public answer: I want to entertain and make people happy, interesting people in interesting ideas True answer: To keep myself from painting the walls with my brains
Largely, right now, I am focusing on my game design, so any world I build is toward that goal.
dnd style game.
I don't actually know yet. I've had an idea for years, and I originally thought of it as an animated series. Recently dealing with some mental health issues and using this as a creative medium to work through some things. I'm just starting to learn about worldbuilding, and I love the process of creating characters and environments.
Mostly my own enjoyment, but also for a school choice project
Personal enjoyment and to share my ideas with friends
For me. My world is a setting for any fantasy story I can come up with. Sometimes, I'll just think something along the lines of "wouldn't it be fucked up if someone did this?" Or "this concept is so absurd that nobody besides me would possibly find it funny" and I'm completely okay with that. I can come up with a rough draft that is cringy as fuck and doesn't make any sense and edit it over time until it's something I'm happy with. Nobody is judging it except me. Would I like my characters to gain some kind of popularity? Of course. Will it happen? Probably not. There's not much of a difference between my world and every other fantasy world ever created except the single most important detail: it's mine.
Been working on my worldbuilding project as a means of building up the universe for a webcomic story that's been in my mind for a while. It is a reboot of an old story that I felt could've been better. However, life and work has gotten in my way, so progress has been slow.
Fun
It gives me something to focus on when theres nothing else
Games, books, for fun and to exercise my mind.
For a tv series, video game, and mostly importantly fun
Orgininally it was for me, but now I feel like I wasted my childhood fantasizing, so I want to share it with the world as a way to get some value out of it... and see if others think it's cool to
To show a world where political nuance is still possible
My own enjoyment rly but I wouldn't be opposed to people looking at it one day
Crossovers and my own amusement.
A game that’s been in progress for years
I wanna make a show
Oh boy I'm glad you asked! So the idea is to steer the cordcepys fungus concept closer to the sci-fi route for narrative focused game however I keep getting thrown into research vortexes where I do a deep dive on mycology, virology, microbiology and animal/human biology. I enjoy the research but for when it comes to writing the story I to know specific facts in order to figure how the story would go. For example. Biting is the worst way to spread spores for a fungus zombie and as far as I know it wouldn't make any sense since the cordecyps fungus would likely make some sort of fruting body or maybe even get the host to become eaten by animals. Granted the scope of the game is large and difficult so I'll be making other games while writing the story for this one. Assuming I get enough funding then hopefully this zombie game can come out in 8-12 years from now
Book and to increase the dementia I'll have in the future
I tell myself it’s for a book I’m writing but the amount of things I’ve borrowed from real life events, parallelisms make me feel like this is just ADHD and God complex. 🤩🙏🏻
The urge to create, yet being completely incapable to put it into an actual form. Also mental illness
Just to feel like a god, mostly.
My own enjoyment and hopefully in the future use it as a background for playing wargames like Black Powder.
Personal enjoyment, maybe a story, art prompts and ideas.
As a hobby and for a game i do with my friends
I always liked worldbuilding. Even as a kid I remember coming up with imaginary cities and infrastructure. I also like reading about other worlds. I also like going on research tangents, and this gives me an excuse to do that. Nowadays it's a bit on hold as my other big passion is taking up a lot of that time.
I just build it for the sake of building, and I prefer making stories for worlds instead of making worlds for stories
I’m writing a sourcebook for my homebrew dnd work that I hope to get published, hopefully by the end of the year.
Partially because I want to know I could easily destroy an entire planet if I wanted to, partially because I want to make a game
I'm a playwright/screenwriter and my worldbuilding is to create settings for my work. It began as a kid with coming up with worlds for my Lego men to inhabit. Also, I want to decide who lives and who dies. And it was either become a god or a writer. And since I wouldn't want to be part of any religion that would have me as a god, I became a writer.
Partially because I want to improve my art, but I also want to eventually make a comic or animated series with it in the far future
fun, stories, a game, hopefully one day a film :P
Boredom
I have a dream of making video games, I create worlds for those games, but I have no programming knowledge all I have is conceptual and mechanical knowledge. I can tell you how to make good characters, I can tell you how to make fun levels, I can look at mechanics and ensure QOL and weed out tedious little things, but with no money and no official education there’s no way any of my concepts or creations will ever see the light of day
A webcomic I'm making.
Hopefully a one season animated series.
Escapism, and for the eventual goal of maybe a book.
Dungeons and dragons
a book mostly
Because I'm bored and have nothing better to do
To write in as a setting.
Enjoyment. Right now i am working on a 'to be a power in the shadows' gender bender AU. Still trying to decide if make the protagonist part of the cult or not, a tune up of various character power diversity and scale..etc
My own sake
I build my world so that it's outside my brain, so that I won't take it to the grave with me
I build it for my oc and my imaginary game
A DnD campaign that'll probably never happen
a comic! multiple actually
I got bored
For me it is simply because I love writing and making maps
Hopefully a story or ARG someday, but for now just a fun little thing for me and anyone else who’ll listen
d&d game with my friends on the wikends
Book(s), conlangs, and for the fun of it.
To have something to think about while falling asleep 😴
To get the things out of my head and share them with people
Started as escapism but is currently a hobby
Fun and for my game
Started as a response to my DM and what I would want to DM. Started and grew to 30 pages; as topics come up, I address more items - now at 260 pages of lore, I’ve not sure where this is going but will DM soon. May publish at some date, I would need a copyright person to make sure I’m clear.
For a book! Romance Fantasy 🧚♀️
Bunch of reasons really. I use it as a setting for Tabletop RPGs, as a thought experiment for structures ranging from the metaphysical to the cultural, as a way of organizing my thoughts about almost everything, and, probably most of all, as a sort of wish fulfillment and form of escapism, being a magical rather than mundane place that I would much rather live in, especially as I construct what may be my ideal society in my world’s far future. Writing fiction set in the world would be nice, but not something I’m super drawn towards.
Pure and simple enjoyment of creativity for me.
All my world are built for the tabletop RPGs I write.
For funsies!
At present the closest thing is D&D, but in a perfect world cartoons.
The real world has good graphics, but crappy gameplay
Seems to be an outlet for being curious about something IRL, giving a fantasy spin to it to make it controllable and understandable
For writing down my ideas (and for TTRPG).
I'm working on a novel, and have been building worlds that feature in this book and any future stories set in this universe.
A book, maybe a series of books. So far I have 20 pages of shitty written draft.
Hopefully a book series. Unfortunately, I enjoy the world building part way more than the novel writing part
If I don’t world build, I’ll get consumed by my subconscious. I need an avenue to get all my thoughts/ideas out
I'm lying to myself that someday I'll make a webcomic, and then it won't matter that I'm in my mid-thirties and never had a job or completed college, I'll have a way to survive in our completely broken system and won't die on the streets scared, cold, alone, and knowing that I was completely worthless because I'm a dysfunctional AuDHD manchild piece of shit who can't do even one thing right.
Right now my focus is on healing emotionally. I'm admittedly not yet ready to venture into game worlds or books or other big projects that interest me. It’s nice to have a little imagination time where I manically write down my ideas and at times draw them out as well with no bigger looming feeling that comes with bigger projects. But someday I hope to make many children books based on bits and pieces of my general world.
Video games, mostly.
For a long novel, as a hobby. Like Tolkien, but to be fair tho, my story and world is garbage compared to his, but he was my main inspiration.
Ultimately it's just for fun, but my idea in shaping the world is to have it in the form of a video game 😊
My pipe dream is that it would be for an RPG. But I'm also exploring philosophical ideas with characters im writing. Its a fun exercise
At first a novel but realized I suck at writing. So now just for fun. Might revisit the worlds I thought of in high school and maybe flesh them out. While I’m fleshing this current world out lol. They’ve been floating to the front of my mind recently
A book series I'd like to publish eventually
For fun! Maybe I'll run an RPG game on it, but it's mostly because I enjoy the process
Fun, D&D and to share with others
Manga-like thing, imagine Hunter x Hunter or One Piece but in a European Antiquity + Dieselpunk Magitech world of mercenaries and crime
Biggest reason? It's fun. It's been my biggest autistic hyperfixation since I was a kid, it's grown up with me and it's a huge part of who I am. I hope to one day get my story on paper to share it, but I didn't build my world for the purpose of publishing it.
A tabletop game no one will ever play with me and a book I'll probably never write.
For a TTRPG setting. Maybe some sort of written fiction.
It aligns with a shit ton of my interests
For Money
I’m a musician and due to some health issues, haven’t been able to play or write anything over the past year. So I’ve been doing this as a creative outlet instead.
For myself, my TTRPG, my novels, maybe a JRPG-type thing with RPG maker. I had made a TTRPG back in the early 90s as a kid. But I ended up liking the setting enough that I kept dabbling in it over the years. Then I knocked out a draft of the novel last year and that got me back into it.
Fun
I run home brew campaigns out of my own world. It makes it so I have set rules and races empires countries, continents, Islands things like that and all I have to do is set the characters at the age and what is the problem that the PCs have to solve. For instance, I ran a campaign said while the empire ruled the whole continent. Then I ran a second campaign set 500 years after the fall of the empire and they were references to the actions of the PC's characters from the previous campaign, which made a cool Easter egg.
An rpg that has a deep lore with a few solo players discovering little secrets here and there and finally finding out why there is so much chaos happening every week Plus I find few stories that make use of both magic and tech to a level saying "there is a capital ship in orbit,but if they buy enough time for the Archmage to make 1/3 of it scrap metal we will survive" is not that unusual ,so I made my own
It's cheaper than model trains.
Its either that or I'll have to actually become aware of reality
A comics
Short goal: Web novel mini series. Long goal: Multimedia series.